Certain available gaming machines may enable players to play primary or base games in exchange for a wager of an amount of coins or banknotes of a particular government, such as U.S. dollars. In certain of these available gaming machines, when a player deposits an amount of coins or banknotes, the gaming machine converts the deposited amount into an amount of monetary credits or tokens. In these available gaming machines, the amount of the monetary credits or tokens placed as the wager on the primary game may vary based on the denomination of the gaming machine and the maximum wager amount associated with the gaming machine. For instance, a gaming machine may enable a player to wager a minimum number of monetary credits, such as one monetary credit (e.g., one penny, nickel, dime, quarter or dollar) up to the maximum number of monetary credits, such as five monetary credits. Thus, available gaming machines may enable players to make wagers of substantially different monetary credits or tokens on each play of the primary or base game. Accordingly, it may be appreciated that coins or banknotes (in the form of monetary credits or tokens) are an available form of currency in gaming establishments which enable different players to wager different amounts at substantially different rates of play.
Player tracking points may be another available form of currency in gaming establishments. Player tracking points may be maintained by a player tracking system. Player tracking systems may enable gaming establishments to recognize the value of customer loyalty through identifying frequent and/or high wagering players and rewarding them for their patronage. The cumulative history of a particular player's gaming activity, which may be included in a player profile of a typical player tracking system, may enable gaming establishments to target individual players with direct marketing promotions or customized reward plans. In typically available player tracking systems, the gaming establishment may issue each participating player a player identification card which has an encoded player identification or player tracking account number that uniquely identifies that player. When the player may sit down at a gaming machine, the player may insert the player tracking card into a card reader which may send information or data to a player tracking system to identify the player and the player's player tracking account. The gaming machine may typically monitor any player tracking points the player may earn for their current gaming session and before or upon the player removing their player tracking card, the gaming machine may communicate information or data relating to the player's gaming session to the player tracking system. Upon the conclusion of the player's current gaming session, the player tracking system may update the player's player tracking account accordingly.
Promotional credits may be another available form of currency at a gaming establishment. Promotional credits (delivered as either direct mail offers or as a result of a loyalty bonus) may be utilized in one or more wagering games to provide loyalty incentives to players. Such promotional credits may be offered as a one time event, such as for a player signing up for a player tracking card. Available promotional credits may not typically be immediately redeemable by a player for cash and may be played through the gaming machine.
Bitcoins are a form of internet currency. Bitcoins are intangible virtual coins in the form of a file that may be stored on a computer or a computer-related device. Specifically, a bitcoin (“BTC”) is a unit of currency of a peer-to-peer system that is not regulated by any central or governmental authority. Rather, the regulation of bitcoins (i.e., the issuance of new bitcoins and the tracking of transactions involving bitcoins) may be accomplished collectively by the network of people and businesses that conduct business with bitcoins.
In operation, each time a network node or miner (i.e., a computer in communication with a network) finds the solution to a mathematical proof-of-work problem, a quantity of new bitcoins may be issued, generated or mined. Specifically, network nodes repeatedly try solving instances of the proof-of-work problem through trial and error, with each attempt having an equal and very low prior chance of being a correct solution. When a network node successfully solves the proof-of-work problem (i.e., the network node processes a block of transactions), the network node may be rewarded by receiving a programmed amount of bitcoins. These bitcoins compensate the operators of these network nodes for their computational work used to secure the bitcoin transactions. More specifically, bitcoin mining is the calculation of a hash of a block header, which includes among other things a reference to the previous block, a hash of a set of transactions and a nonce (i.e., a 32-bit field whose value may be set so that the hash of the block will contain a run of zeros). If the hash value is found to be less than the current target (which may be inversely proportional to the difficulty), a new block may be formed and the miner may be rewarded a quantity of newly generated bitcoins, such as fifty newly generated bitcoins. If the hash is not less than the current target, a new nonce may be tried, and a new hash may be calculated. This computation may be done millions of times per second by each miner.
While bitcoins are currently created by solving proof-of-work problems, the bitcoin network is programmed to gradually approach a maximum number of 21,000,000 available bitcoins. Specifically, the bitcoin supply is programmed to grow as a geometric series approximately every 4 years such that by 2013 half of the total available supply of bitcoins will be generated, and by 2017, 75% of the total available supply of bitcoins will be generated. Accordingly, to provide liquidity in the bitcoin supply, bitcoins are divisible to eight decimal places (i.e., to facilitate the use of fractional bitcoins).
Once generated or mined, a bitcoin may be stored in a person's bitcoin “wallet” which may be either stored on the person's computer by the bitcoin software or hosted on a third-party website. The wallet may show users their available bitcoin balance, any transaction history, and the collection of bitcoin addresses they may use to send and receive bitcoins with other users. If an owner of a bitcoin decides to: (i) exchange a quantity of bitcoins for another form of currency, such as for U.S. dollars, and/or used (ii) use a quantity of bitcoins as a form of payment for goods or services, the owner of a bitcoin transfers the bitcoin to a payee by digitally signing a hash of the previous transaction (involving the bitcoin) and a public key of the payee and then adding these to the end of the bitcoin address. With such information viewable in the bitcoin address, the payee can verify the chain of ownership. For example, when a bitcoin belonging to user A is transferred to user B, user A's ownership over that bitcoin is relinquished by adding user B's public key address to the bitcoin coin and signing the result with the private key that is associated with user A's address. User B now owns the bitcoin and can transfer it further. In this example, user A is prevented from transferring the already spent bitcoin to other users because a public list of all previous transactions may be collectively maintained by the network.
Compared to existing types of available currency, bitcoins appear to have an increased level of anonymity. That is, while a person who has deposited an amount of an available currency, such as an amount of U.S. dollars, at a bank may be required to provide their identification to withdraw their deposited funds and/or transfer their deposited funds to another person, bitcoins are anonymous and do not require any identification (other than a randomly generated key address) of the people currently owning such bitcoins. Additionally, compared to existing types of available currency which rely on a central authority, such as a bank, to accurately maintain records regarding an amount of currency a person has deposited and to make an amount of deposited currency available to a person upon a person's request, bitcoins do not rely on any central authority to maintain any account balances.
While the adoption of bitcoins as a peer-to-peer currency continues to expand, no available gaming machines utilize bitcoins in association with any aspects of a player's gaming experience.